This book is the first comprehensive treatment of the phonological system of Basque available in English. Basque is a morphologically rich and fairly regular language with a number of active phonological rules that are limited to certain morphological environments. In addition, it has a high degree of dialectical fragmentation. These characteristics of Basque make this language a good test ground to investigate the interaction of phonological rules both with each other and with morphological processes, which the author does within the Lexical Phonology framework. The effects of rule interaction on feature geometry are a major concern - how phonological operations modify underlying structures and how the structures created by one phonological rule can serve as input to other rules. These effects are examined in a study of the rather peculiar behaviour of Basque affricates. Another area which requires particular attention, and in which Basque dialects differ widely, is prosody. Along with stress-accent systems of different types, Basque also possesses pitch-accent or restricted tonal systems in some of its western dialects. This book should be of interest to advanced students and teachers of linguistics, especially Romance linguistics and lexical phonology.

This book is the first comprehensive treatment of the phonological system of Basque available in English. Basque is a morphologically rich and fairly regular language with a number of active phonological rules that are limited to certain morphological environments. In addition, it has a high degree of dialectical fragmentation. These characteristics of Basque make this language a good test ground to investigate the interaction of phonological rules both with each other and with morphological processes, which the author does within the Lexical Phonology framework. The effects of rule interaction on feature geometry are a major concern - how phonological operations modify underlying structures and how the structures created by one phonological rule can serve as input to other rules. These effects are examined in a study of the rather peculiar behaviour of Basque affricates. Another area which requires particular attention, and in which Basque dialects differ widely, is prosody. Along with stress-accent systems of different types, Basque also possesses pitch-accent or restricted tonal systems in some of its western dialects. This book should be of interest to advanced students and teachers of linguistics, especially Romance linguistics and lexical phonology.

Questions related to the origin and history of the Basque language spark considerable interest, since it is the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in western Europe. However, until now, there was no readily available source in English providing answers to these questions or giving an overview of past and current research in this area. This book is intended to partly fill this void. The book contains both state-of-the-art papers which summarize our knowledge about particular areas of Basque historical linguistics, and articles presenting new hypotheses and points of view based on hard evidence and careful analysis. All contributors to this volume have demonstrated expertise in the topic within Basque historical linguistics that their chapter addresses. Two classical articles by the late Luis Michelena are included in English translation. In addition, the book includes studies on diachronic phonology, morphology and syntax. The relation of Basque to other languages is also investigated in a couple of chapters.

The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

This book presents a new reconstruction of Proto-Basque, the mother language of modern Basque varieties, historical Basque, and Aquitanian, grounded in traditional methods of historical linguistics. Building on a long tradition of Basque scholarship, the comparative method and internal reconstruction, informed by the phonetic bases of sound change and phonological typology, are used to explain previously underappreciated alternations and asymmetries in Basque sound patterns, resulting in a radically new view of the proto-language. The comparative method is then used to compare this new Proto-Basque with Proto-Indo-European, revealing regular sound correspondences in basic vocabulary and grammatical formatives. Evaluation of these results supports a distant genetic relationship between Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European, and offers new insights into specific linguistic properties of these two ancient languages. This comprehensive volume, which includes a detailed appendix including Proto-Basque/Proto-Indo-European cognate sets, will be of general interest to linguists, archeologists, historians, and geneticists, and of particular interest to scholars in historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology, language change, and Basque and Indo-European studies. Errata for the book can be found at: https://julietteblevins.ws.gc.cuny.edu/proto-basque/

For many different reasons, speakers borrow words from other languages to fill gaps in their own lexical inventory. The past ten years have been characterized by a great interest among phonologists in the issue of how the nativization of loanwords occurs. The general feeling is that loanword nativization provides a direct window for observing how acoustic cues are categorized in terms of the distinctive features relevant to the L1 phonological system as well as for studying L1 phonological processes in action and thus to the true synchronic phonology of L1. The collection of essays presented in this volume provides an overview of the complex issues phonologists face when investigating this phenomenon and, more generally, the ways in which unfamiliar sounds and sound sequences are adapted to converge with the native language s sound pattern. This book is of interest to theoretical phonologists as well as to linguists interested in language contact phenomena."

Basque is the sole survivor of the very ancient languages of Western Europe. This book, written by an internationally renowned specialist in Basque, provides a comprehensive survey of all that is known about the prehistory of the language, including pronunciation, the grammar and the vocabulary. It also provides a long critical evaluation of the search for its relatives, as well as a thumbnail sketch of the language, a summary of its typological features, an external history and an extensive bibliography.

Phonology - the study of how the sounds of speech are represented in our minds - is one of the core areas of linguistic theory, and is central to the study of human language. This handbook brings together the world's leading experts in phonology to present the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the field. Focusing on research and the most influential theories, the authors discuss each of the central issues in phonological theory, explore a variety of empirical phenomena, and show how phonology interacts with other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology, phonetics, and language acquisition. Providing a one-stop guide to every aspect of this important field, The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology will serve as an invaluable source of readings for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, an informative overview for linguists and a useful starting point for anyone beginning phonological research.

This collection explores current issues in the phonology and morphology of the major Iberian languages: Basque, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish. Most of the essays are based on innovative theoretical frameworks and show how recent revolutions in theoretical ideas have affected the study of these languages. Distinguished scholars address a diverse range of topics, including: stress assignment, phonological variability, distribution of rhotics, the imperative paradigm, focus, pluralization, spirantization, intonation, prosody, apocope, epenthesis, palatalization, and depalatalization.

Questions related to the origin and history of the Basque language spark considerable interest, since it is the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in western Europe. However, until now, there was no readily available source in English providing answers to these questions or giving an overview of past and current research in this area. This book is intended to partly fill this void.The book contains both state-of-the-art papers which summarize our knowledge about particular areas of Basque historical linguistics, and articles presenting new hypotheses and points of view based on hard evidence and careful analysis.All contributors to this volume have demonstrated expertise in the topic within Basque historical linguistics that their chapter addresses. Two classical articles by the late Luis Michelena are included in English translation. In addition, the book includes studies on diachronic phonology, morphology and syntax. The relation of Basque to other languages is also investigated in a couple of chapters.